Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/27

 Power could not have fallen into better Hands, than those of the first and second Cæsar. Your Lordship well knows what Obligations Virgil had to the latter of them: He saw, beside, that the Commonwealth was lost without ressource: The Heads of it destroy'd; the Senate new moulded, grown degenerate; and either bought off, or thrusting their own Necks into the Yoke, out of fear of being forc'd. Yet I may safely affirm for our great Author, (as Men of good Sense are generally Honest) that he was still of Republican Principles in Heart.

I think, I need use no other Argument to justify my Opinion, than that of this one Line, taken from the Eighth Book of the Eneis. If he had not well studied his Patron's Temper, it might have Ruin'd him with another Prince. But Augustus was not discontented, at least that we can find, that Cato was plac'd, by his own Poet, in Elisium; and there giving Laws to the Holy Souls, who deserv'd to be separated from the Vulgar sort of good Spirits. For his Conscience could not but whisper to the Arbitrary Monarch, that the Kings of Rome were at first Elective, and Govern'd not without a Senate: That Romulus was no Hereditary Prince, and though, after his Death, he receiv'd Divine Honours, for the good he did on Earth, yet he was but a God of their own making: that the last Tarquin was Expell'd justly, for Overt-Acts of Tyranny, and Male-Administration; for such are the Conditions of an Elective Kingdom: And I meddle not with others: Being, for my own Opinion, of Montaign's Principles, That an Honest Man ought to be contented with that Form of Government, and with those Fundamental Constitutions of it, which he receiv'd from Rh